The Lifeboat Clique Read Online Free PDF Page B

should quit while I was ahead. But something stubborn in me—something that refused to believe this was a fluke or a trap—made me decide to stay a while longer.
    Once when I was very young, my family took a trip to Portland. When it was time to go home, we took off from the Portland airport, the sky cloudy overhead. The plane rose up through the clouds, and suddenly I could see the blue sky and the yellow sun above us, and the clouds were now a blanket below the plane. There was a whole new world up there. And I guess that’s what I think of all stories. We believe we know the limits of them and then we find out there’s another story lying right on top of them. In my mind, which was stupid, I thought there was another, brighter story going on at this very moment, and I just hadn’t broken through yet. So, instead of heading tothe door, I went into one of the bedrooms.
    Big mistake. Some naked monster made of two horndogs was humping itself on a four-poster bed.
    The boy part of the monster rose up, his eyes wild.
    â€œGet out of here!” he shouted.
    â€œWith pleasure!” I screamed, and beat a hasty retreat.
    I decided that each bedroom probably contained a similar scene, because the first thing that high school kids have to do at a party is soil a stranger’s bed. It’s a beautiful ritual, like a Japanese tea ceremony.
    I decided to see what was upstairs. Maybe blue sky and a yellow sun.
    The second floor was one big den and wet bar bordered by giant windows that looked down on the ocean, and was even more hideously furnished than the downstairs. Trevor Dunlap was drumming on the bar with a pair of empty beer bottles, gently enough not to break the bottles, hard enough to make the most obnoxious sound in the world. I knew he played drums in a band, but apparently he was going solo tonight. He wasn’t talking to anyone, just gazing out straight ahead, nodding to the beat of his hellish racket.
    A giant, never-ending sofa with leopard print and cabriole legs wound around the room, playing host to various people drinking and laughing. A group of guyssurrounded a pool table whose felt covering was the color of those molten lakes you see in fantasy movies. A suit of armor stood by the bar as though it were waiting to check IDs. An ugly zebra rug covered the floor. A baby grand piano sat near a narrow set of stairs that led to the rooftop. The winding staircase, I had to admit, looked cool. It rose in a very tight spiral to the ceiling, where a small door had been placed. I thought about going up to the roof and looking at the stars or down at the sea, but I was afraid of interrupting some act of frantic humping, and I couldn’t take that sight again. Still clutching my unopened beer, I took a seat on one of the sofas.
    There I sat, holding my warming beer. All around me the party progressed, with people getting louder and rowdier, and guys shoving and roughhousing each other and screaming playful bro-insults. At some point, I heard the beer bottle drumsticks stop clinking and looked back to see Trevor smoking something that was not an e-cigarette, his hair hanging down in his face.
    I was not even important enough to be challenged again. No doubt Sienna was giving clumsy, unnecessary CPR to her passed-out best friend in the first-floor bathroom, and Hayley was talking and talking, and Abigail was surveying her kingdom or breaking a window or whatever she did for fun these days.
    Croix was still nowhere in sight.
    I decided I was going to sit there with my beer and my invisible cat and outlast all of them. From what I heard, the coolest kids always stay to the end of the party because they don’t care the most, and their parents are the most high on something and therefore the most permissive. I was going to be one of those kids tonight, clinging on to the good times around me like a barnacle.
    I had just formulated this plan when something awful happened. Something that I did